Never talked about the important thing. Are the kernel modules fully open source and is the SoC fully documented publicly. If those two aspects are not a yes, this entire affair is an attempt to steal hardware ownership just like phones.
Yes, they submitted initial patchset to Linux kernel back in October (1 day after snapdragon X announcement). On Qualcomm's website they say that full support for the chip will be merged into Linux kernel within six months.
I like the arm world because you don't have only two players which are boring and are not good at all if you think of a world wide technological progress.
It's a rather poor world actually.
I'm trying a cheap arm Chromebook now and I can say it could replace a standard pc/mac already, in terms of performances.
Mediatek can already challenge apple and snapdragon so we already have 3 players but I think Samsung, and unisoc will enter the arena. Rockchip already did it with chromebooks and they look enough too.
And thinking about prices, considering the t820 that is about 150€ with the Nubia neo (or neo2), you could have chromebooks for maybe 200€, if you add 12" screen and stylus support.
Wow, Linaro. that's a name I haven't heard in a while. They were the ones to optimize Android builds during the IceCreamSandwich days and just last day I was wondering if there were any third party optimization project still out there. All the best to them.